My experiences of Scottish justice especially in relation to fraud in Scottish Enterprise.

Wednesday, 12 April 2017

MORE INACCURACIES FROM THE PIRC IN THE SCOTTISH ENTERPRISE FRAUD CASE

Mr
Eddie Cairns

72
Hillhouse Street

GLASGOW
G21 4HP

12
April 2017

Mr Ilya Zharov

Head of Reviews & Policy

The
Police Investigations and Review Commissioner

Hamilton
House

Hamilton
Business Park

Caird
Park

Hamilton
ML3 0QA

Dear Mr Zharov,

I refer to your
letter dated 7 April 2017.

Your letter
makes no mention of my important letter to you dated 11 February 2017. Did that
letter also get lost in your system? A copy is attached.

In your letter
dated 7 April 2017 you assert that your letter dated 8 February 2017 was ‘not intended as an invitation to discuss
merits of your case again’.

But my letter
dated 9 February 2017 was responding directly to the wider issues you yourself
had raised. Your pretence that I had raised those issues is false and
insulting. At the beginning of my letter I clearly linked my comments to the
issues that you had already raised, in the following terms, reproduced here in
italics for convenience:

Your letter is reproduced below and I have added my
comments as footnotes.

The following
extracts from your letter, reproduced here in italics for convenience, confirm
that fact:

In order to give you a full explanation
for my decision, I would like to draw your attention to certain aspects in
relation to the information you are seeking to correct.

As you are aware, you asked PCCS to
review how Strathclyde Police had handled your complaints about what you
perceived to be an incomplete investigation into allegations you made back in
1993. In order to do that, PCCS had to request all relevant paperwork from
Strathclyde Police. That information was thereafter carefully assessed before a
CHR report was published stating whether, in the Commissioner’s view, the handling
of your complaint was to a reasonable standard.

The specific CHR report in question,
PCCS/00448/08, was published in August 2010.

The only electronic copy of that report
is retained on PIRC’s internal archive. The original source of this information
is the paperwork provided by Strathclyde Police to PCCS during the CHR process.

Whilst you remain of the view that the
initial investigation was incomplete, there is nothing in the documentation
provided to suggest that the information is factually inaccurate.

The original source of this information
is the paperwork provided by Strathclyde Police to PCCS during the CHR process.
As previously stated, all papers and electronic records in relation to that
process have now been destroyed. However, it is a matter of fact that you made
more than one attempt to raise legal proceedings against Strathclyde Police. It
is also a matter of fact that Strathclyde Police successfully raised an action
against you in terms of the Vexatious Actions (Scotland) Act 1898. Accordingly,
the information referred to is factually correct.

The original source of this information
is the paperwork provided by Strathclyde Police to PCCS during the CHR process.
As previously stated, all papers and electronic records in relation to that
process have now been destroyed. It is not in dispute that you wrote 82
letters. However, I note that you are disputing that they were all letters of
complaint. Your communication with Strathclyde Police was in relation to
allegations you made back in 1993, and the investigation (or lack of it) into
those allegations. In addition you made further allegations against police
officers involved in the investigation. You also wrote to Strathclyde Police
offering what you perceived to be additional evidence as, in your view, the
police did not investigate your allegations thoroughly. I fully accept that
only 8 of those letters were recorded formally as complaints about police. The
extract above does not state that you have made 82 separate complaints.

The definition of a complaint can be
summarised as a statement expressing dissatisfaction about an act or omission.
It is accurate to say that all of your correspondence stems from your
dissatisfaction with how the police dealt with allegations you made in 1993.
Accordingly, I do not consider the information contained in our report as
inaccurate.

In addition, since the publishing of our
CHR report in August 2010, you have continued to write to Strathclyde Police, now
Police Scotland, and made a number of new allegations and complaints.
Accordingly, the up-to-date number of letters sent by you to Police Scotland is
significantly higher. On this basis, it is unclear why you consider that the
information in our CHR report, which is no longer readily accessible to the
public, is causing you substantial unwarranted damage or distress.

The original source of these extracts is
correctly identified as being the letter dated 21st April
2016 from the SPA’s Stuart Milne to you. This letter was a response to your
complaint to the SPA. You thereafter asked the PIRC to review the handling of
that complaint. Accordingly, this letter came to our attention at your request.
This part of Mr Milne’s letter was copied into our CHR report PIRC/00111/16
within the “SPA Handling of Complaint” section for reference purpose only. In
so far as the recommendation made by PCCS is concerned, the extract in question
is factually correct. Thereafter Mr Milne expressed his assessment on whether
ACC Nicolson’s actions (not responding to your correspondence) were indeed
justified in his opinion. There is nothing in this extract that I can identify
as factually incorrect and, in any event, you will appreciate that we cannot
correct the letter sent to you by Mr Milne.

To conclude, points 1, 2 and 3 are
considered reliable and factually correct information. In relation to points 4,
5 and 6 – these are extracts from the letter sent to you by the SPA in response
to your complaint to the SPA. That letter formed the basis of your application
to the PIRC for a CHR and was quoted in our CHR report for reference only. In
so far as quotes from that letter which refer to the recommendation made by
PCCS back in August 2010, I consider that there are no factual inaccuracies.

The last
sentence completes the extracts.

Every wider
issue that you raised in your letter dated 8 February 2017 added to the
inaccuracies about me unlawfully held and processed by the PIRC as detailed in
my letter to you dated 9 February 2017.

Consequently,
I want to submit formally a new Section 10 Notice under the terms of the Data
Protection Act 1998 in respect of the additional inaccuracies about me held and
processed by the PIRC that I already identified in my letters dated 9 February
2017 and 11 February 2017.

The PIRC’s holding and processing of
inaccurate information about me has caused me unwarranted and substantial
damage and unwarranted and substantial distress, and is likely to cause me
unwarranted and substantial damage and unwarranted and substantial distress in
future if not corrected, by rejecting my very serious concerns about this case
without investigating them adequately if at all in the light of all the
evidence available and by falsely portraying me as an incompetent accountant, a
false accuser, a time waster and someone who has repeatedly breached
professional standards.

Thereby the PIRC have seriously damaged my
professional and personal reputation without justification and are continuing
to damage my professional and personal reputation without justification.

Consequently I want the inaccurate and
damaging information about me to be corrected.

About Me

SCOTTISH ENTERPRISE
This story highlights the dangers involved in being a whistleblower. It relates how trying to resist instructions to falsify accounts in any establishment organisation, in this case Scottish Enterprise, can swiftly lead to unemployment, destruction of your professional reputation, homelessness and bankruptcy. In the longer term it can result in grinding poverty, social isolation, mental health problems, being falsely classified by the government as a persistent correspondent and a vexatious litigant. In my case I attained the dubious honour of being listed on the Court of Session website as the number one vexatious litigant in Scotland for 11 years so far (as at September 2016).
In reality however none of my cases was vexatious.